"Rebirth"
I
It's chaos inside the Blackbird; with Cyclops at its helm, Firebird and Nightcrawler try to keep pressure on Colossus' wound with her hands, but his wine coloured blood seeps through her fingers in seconds, no matter how hard she presses. She pulls a first aid kit down from the hull and rummages through it searching for an antiseptic or blood clotter of some sort. Finding a bottle of iodine, she sprays it on the incisions without thinking to warn Colossus, which causes him to wince and groan at the sudden sharp, stinging sensation. She whispers something along the lines of "whoops" to herself and unspools a roll of gauze to hold against the wounds, but they soak through too.
'Scott!' she calls to the cockpit, 'I don't know how much longer I can keep this up!'
'I'm trying Jean but I can't make this thing fly any faster!'
A heart rate monitor attached to Colossus' finger beeps in the background, growing more and more inconsistent as time passes.
'We're going to lose him!'
Colossus lifts one of his giant hands onto Jean's shoulder, calming her somewhat. 'Please… do not tell my mother how I died… so foolishly,' he manages to eke out through the pain.
'You're going to be fine, Pete. She won't have to know anything.' He looks at Jean lovingly, like a sibling would, still grasping her shoulder as his eyes start to close. Fading away. 'Scott, call the professor!'
'Can't you reach him with your mind thing? It's faster that way.' Scott responds from the cockpit.
'I'M BUSY!'
Scott jabs a few buttons on the console with his finger before a ringing sound emanates from the plane's speakers and then stops. 'Did you find Magneto?' Xavier asks.
'Peter is dying. I need you to tell me what to do,' Scott says, panic starting to set in.
'Bring him back to the mansion. I'll make a call to a friend who will be able to aid Piotr.'
'He needs a hospital.'
'We cannot risk exposing ourselves, Scott. You know this. It is imperative to our safety, as a team, that we remain hidden. Get back here quickly.' The call ends with three succinct beeps. Scott grinds his teeth in anger, but follows his orders as any good soldier does. They are, after all, a team.
'What did he say?' Jean asks.
'We're taking him back to the house.'
'What? Why?'
'I don't know, he said he's making a call.'
'Is he insane? Peter needs a doctor, Scott! Not some rando!'
'I'm just doing what you told me to, Jean! You're the one who told me to call him! YOU TOLD ME TO CALL HIM! YOU, TOLD ME! ALRIGHT?' Scott breathes frantically through his nose. In and out, in and out. Jean stands there in shock, still holding the bloodied gauze to Piotr's chest. Nightcrawler looks between the two as if he was watching the slowest game of tennis ever played, not sure whether or not he should intervene with a witty remark. Scott's breaths become more drawn out as he collects himself, inhaling, before holding for a few seconds, and then exhaling. 'Listen, Jean–'
'Don't.' She pauses for a moment. 'How far are we?'
'Ten, fifteen minutes.'
II
'It's time to go home, people. Let's get out of here,' the teacher says, dismissing everyone from class as the final bell of the day rings. The students trickle out of the classroom one by one as they do every afternoon, in nearly the same order. Sam Guthrie, who could be no older than twelve going on thirteen, is always last. He wanders off of the school grounds, backpack slung over one shoulder, and into the suburban streets. Cars drive past here and there, but the roads are quieter than usual. Maybe everyone is worried about those mutants, Sam thinks, but doesn't dwell on the idea for long. There are more important things going on in his world than some weirdos with superpowers. In fact, here comes the top of his list now.
Two schoolboys, both a few years older than Sam, come barrelling up beside him. The first is tall, at least a foot and a half taller than Sam, and the second is as much wider than Sam as the first is tall. The bullies, flanking Sam as they walk, couldn't care more about the mutants. Or, at least they will.
'Hey, Sammy,' the tall one says. Sam ignores him, continuing his walk home. He grabs Sam by the shoulder. 'Hey Sammy,' he repeats, 'I'm talkin' to you.'
'Leave me alone,' Sam replies matter of factly.
'What are you gonna do if we don't? Run to daddy again?' the wide one asks. Sam tries to run away, but the tall one has moved his hand from Sam's shoulder to a strap on his backpack.
'Come on, Sammy. We just wanna talk.'
The tall one rips the backpack off of Sam's shoulder and rifles through it. 'Give it back,' Sam demands indignantly.
'Make me.'
For the first time in his life, Sam decides to fight back. He lunges for the bag, but the bully evades the attack and continues looking for any items of value. The wide one throws a stone he found on the ground and it hits Sam square in the forehead. A dribble of blood seeps from the graze left behind. 'Poor Sammy. Gonna cry?' he taunts.
Sam was already upset, but it was nothing out of the ordinary for him. This happened at least once every few weeks. Everything has culminated in this final confrontation, surely to be a battle for the ages. Sam's eyes, filled with rage, start to glow, like two little canaries embedded in his face, though he doesn't realise it.
The tall one takes a step back, dropping the bag. 'Hey, Sammy, whatcha doin'?'
Sam's entire body begins to vibrate, shaking more and more violently with every passing second. As his anger finally channels into an extraordinary feat, he explodes, sending the two bullies into the air, before they smack down on the ground in agony. The tall one has severe burns down the left side of his body, particularly on his face, and the wide one is left with only a few minor grazes. Sam however, appears to be completely untouched despite the sidewalk surrounding him now sporting a new crack where he stands. The tall boy manages to get to his feet, holding his hand to his face as blood flows from his wounds and he runs away, making a sound that can only be described as a mix of crying, screaming and gurgling.
Sam, terrified by his power, flees too.
From one of the many houses, charges a man in his fifties, whose shaved head glistens in the afternoon sun. He has a beard made of stubble, as if he had rolled his face in a plate full of short, grey cactus needles, and a confederate flag flying from a pole on his porch. He sees Sam running away from the incident.
'Hey, you,' he yells out, 'I seen what you did! It's only a matter of time before we find ya, ya fuckin' mutie!'
III
'We don't have much time left my child. But I won't let them take you from me,' Professor Abraham Cornelius says leaning against an examination table. Strapped atop it is Weapon X, sedated and bound at the wrists and ankles. They're in a dark, dank room made entirely from concrete. Five cylindrical stasis pods, whose tops almost reach the ceiling, line the southern wall, while various other medical instruments are scattered across the place. The northern wall seems to be one giant mirror, but the trained eye would easily recognise it as one-way glass. There is only one door; situated at the centre of the easterly wall and the final wall is barren, save for a few stains that look to have splattered up from the ground.
Cornelius himself appears to be upside down; clean-shaven on top with scruffy tufts of hair below. A pair of polarised full-moon glasses rest on the bridge of his nose, with their arms extending to the back of his bald head. He leans down next to Weapon X, right beside its ear.
'They're afraid of you,' he says, his lips nearly touching the beast's earlobe as he makes the final "oo" sound. He presses a button on the side of the table and Weapon X's eyes shoot open, but remains physically paralysed, unable to even thrash in its confinement, only grunting and snarling. 'I'm going to get you out of this place, if it's the last thing I do. But you have to keep quiet.'
Weapon X relaxes, realising the futility of its resistance. 'You must listen closely…' Cornelius starts before the metal door to the room bursts open with Director Sublime on the other side, two soldiers in tow.
'What was that, Cornelius?' Sublime asks, storming over to the table.
'A freak accident. Completely out of our control.'
'The hell do you mean, "out of our control"? Our weapon was destroyed by a bunch of kids!'
'Precisely my point. Had they not arrived, there would have been no issue. That is out of our control.'
'Twice in less than twelve months. Going rogue. This thing has been locked up for half a century without one incident, and now, it just starts acting up? It's no coincidence, Professor,' Sublime says, staring right into his own mirrored reflections that cover Cornelius' eyes. 'I want it destroyed.'
'You want what destroyed?'
Sublime gestures towards Weapon X, still lying motionless on the table. 'It.'
Cornelius looks back at Sublime, stunned. 'My entire life's work, gone. No. I cannot destroy it. Not in good conscience.'
'If not you, then someone else will.'
'I cannot let you. I won't.'
Sublime beckons one of the grunts over to the table. 'Show him. Show him how to do it,' he says to the baffled professor.
Cornelius, defeated, takes a step back. 'Second button from the right.'
The soldier looks back to Sublime, who nods in certainty, before looking to the button and pressing it. 'I'm going to enjoy this,' Sublime says, moving closer to the table. Cornelius, assessing his options, slinks away without notice and out through the door. The table lets out a dozen jets of steam as syringe-tipped mechanical arms emerge from below, injecting a toxically green fluid into Weapon X, before retracting back into the table. 'Now, was that so hard, Cornelius?' Sublime asks, turning around. 'Cornelius?'
The door slams shut with the weight of four hundred pounds of steel, booming. Cornelius, nowhere to be seen. A growl rumbles from behind Sublime, followed by four metal shackles, tearing apart simultaneously. The door locks.
'Sir, it's gotten free.'
Sublime spins around to see Weapon X, clamouring off the table, and immediately turns back to the mirror. Hiding behind the glass in the control room, Cornelius taunts the Director. 'I told you, John! I told you when we started this operation that it could not be sustained! Could not be contained! But you never listened to me!'
'What have you done?' Sublime yells at his own reflection. Weapon X staggers to its feet, still groggy from the sedative, but the adrenaline is starting to reach its heart. The three foot-long metal claws slowly extrude from between its knuckles, making a long drawn out sniiiiiiiiikt sound. Drawing its arms back, it charges the two soldiers, who are standing next to each other, moving nearly fifteen feet in a single lunge and attacks them. They fire their pistols but the unencumbered Weapon X becomes an unstoppable force. The bullets penetrate its body, but within seconds the wounds have healed, as if it had never been shot in the first place. It hacks at the soldiers as crimson blood sprays across the mirror and walls, adding to the collection of stains.
'Cornelius, let me out of here!' Sublime yells into the other room. Before he can construct another thought, the six blades plunge into his chest, protruding at least three inches through the other side of his torso. The claws retract and Sublime drops to the floor, blood pooling in his half-open mouth.
Despite Cornelius' assumptions about the creature, he had never been quite sure as to how it would behave when finally set loose after five years of constant mental manipulation. Would it remember?
Weapon X sniffs the air. It knows someone is missing. Someone important. It turns around and stares through the mirror, directly at Cornelius. "Can it see me?" Cornelius thought. It couldn't possibly understand the concept of a one-way mirror, he concluded. It sniffs one more time and leaps at the glass, sending all three hundred pounds of muscle and pure adamantium hurtling through the mirror, shattering in too many pieces to count. Huddling in the corner is Cornelius, almost foetal in his shape.
'Please… don't kill me…' he pleads. Weapon X trudges closer to its maker as he scrambles further and further into the corner of the room. 'If it weren't for me… you would be nothing. Nothing!'
Weapon X stands there, looming over the infantile professor, no claws in sight. He kneels down, eye to eye with each other. Weapon X puts its large, hairy hand underneath Cornelius' bearded chin, almost tenderly or lovingly. And with one motion it pops its claws through his skull, leaving a scowl imprinted on his face for the rest of time. Weapon X's rage begins to subside, but its troubles have only just begun. Now comes the escape.
IV
Sprinting through the underground facility, Weapon X drops soldiers to their knees, screaming. Blood sprays along the walls and renders the original colour of the floor unrecognisable. Sirens wail, blaring with flashing red lights. A voice booms over the loudspeakers, over and over again, 'Red alert. Red alert. Asset out of containment. Asset out of containment. Do not approach. I repeat, do not approach.'
Slipping through the dark corridors, Weapon X lays waste to all in its path. More projectiles fly in its general direction, but there's no use. It brushes the bullets off like dust on a tabletop. Running up a flight of stairs, Weapon X reaches a doorway, hesitating for a brief moment. It doesn't open it, simply making two great slashes in the door, marking it with a giant "X" before kicking it through.
Outside for the first conscious time in decades, it falls down in the snow, surrounded by the Canadian wilderness. Sleet falls from the sky with the force of little needles. There seems to be an incoming blizzard. Weapon X retracts the claws, blood dripping from its own knuckles. Turning its head, it looks back down into the facility a short moment before staggering to its feet and running. Running God knows where.